LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

THE FIRST WEIBEL CHESS TEAM, 1989

I am always amazed with my encounters with the past. I guess the longer I live the more encounters I will have. After a family dinner, Susan and I went with my son and his wife, Micah and Ivy, to the new house they will move into in a month or so. They needed to spread some ant spray—or should I call it anti-ant spray. Ivy had told me that a woman who lives across the street told her I was her chess coach at Weibel back when chess started there. We went across the street to meet her. Her name was Jennifer Cheung. I had a lot of Jennifer’s in chess in the early 90’s and so I wasn’t sure which one she was. When she told me that she was maybe the only one of her group who was still alive it clicked. Ugly tragedy hit that first group of students I had at Weibel. The first came when a boy named Rathnam was killed with his grandparents in Taxi cab accident in India. Then a few years later Scott Ferguson was killed when a speeding bus hit his bike on a Boy Scout trip returning from Yosemite. Another Jennifer committed suicide and Eric Chen died from a rapidly spreading cancer. This was the group that won us our first few State Championships. I realized that the Jennifer I was talking to was the first Weibel girl to enter USCF chess tournaments and set the stage for a dynasty of great Weibel girl players.

In the Spring of 1989 four players went to San Rafael to compete in our first ever State Championships. Weibel won its first team trophy due to my first grade son, Micah, winning the K-3 Championship division. His points along with those of Rathnam Kumarappan, also in first grade, Jennifer Cheung in third grade and Tov Fisher-Kirshner in Kindergarten got us a fifth place. That trophy launched a dynasty. We were very excited as you can see from the inserted photo.

I expanded the program at Weibel and I took a larger group of players to the States in 1990. In that group I had two great Mission San Jose players—Joe Lonsdale III and Kevin Simler.  MSJE had not yet started a chess team. I learned to my surprise that I could not use them as competitors for Weibel. I was a novice to chess competition. Yet, even without the two great MSJE players training with me at Weibel, we won our first of many State Championships.

I showed Jennifer the photo I had on my iPhone of that first Weibel Team. She was thrilled and I could see all her positive memories returning. She has two daughters now the youngest of whom is just a touch older than my grandson, Elizur.  Perhaps her daughter and Elizur will start a chess dynasty in their Fremont
 school when they start there—Glenmore. Maybe they will become the fifth Fremont school to win a Spring Nationals that had their seeds planted from the Weibel program. Hopkins, Mission San Jose, Weibel and Gomes are the four. Time will tell.

Thanks again for your children's participation in the 2014-2015 chess program.  In all indications the children had fun, improved their chess skills and loved chess.

While I am well aware that the vast majority of you will not fill out your applications for our 27th year until the end of the summer, I wanted you to be aware that it is presently online.  I know many of you like to plan well in advance and set your calendars.  You can go directly to the information sheet for 2015-2016 from http://www.calnorthyouthchess.org/WeibelChess/Information2015-2016.html  If in the future you forget this link all you need to do is go to http://www.WeibelChess.org   

Please visit Weibel Chess on Facebook and like us.  Do not forget to check out our blog http://weibelchess.blogspot.com/  If you are not a follower, please submit your information in the "Follow by Email" box.

And, pretty please, let your Weibel friends know about our outstanding chess program.  While the number of players on the Team(Friday) increased dramatically this year, the number of players attending the Club (Tuesday) decreased.

FULL REPORT ON THE WEIBEL CHESS TEAMS AT THE CALCHESS STATE SCHOLASTICS, 2015

                  As most of you know Weibel Chess took a three year hiatus from the CalChess State Scholastic.  We returned this year with a big splash. This event has been the largest and most prestigious of the California youth chess tournaments since its founding 40 years ago.  Two times the competition, that includes numerous divisions besides the championship, drew as many as 1400 participants when you include the side events like the Blitz and Bughouse.  The numbers have dropped in recent years but have begun to climb again in part, to be candid, with the 109 players Weibel sent.  This years total reached 915.  The present organizer, Judit Sztaray, in her first year doing the event really went all out to produce an efficient and fair competition.  Sadly, what she failed to account for was how much more difficult it is to run an event as it grows. Simply 100 more entries means 100% more problems.  She and her staff did their best to try to resolve all the issues.   Some of her new ideas as the sending each parent via e-mail his/her child’s pairing helped relieve some of the crowding around the postings before each round.   I know many of you were upset to sit through three hours of awards presentations and learn that they did not have your child’s trophies.  Trophies were promised to the top 40 players and they only had enough for the top 20.  A whole section of trophies never showed up and a few section awards disappeared.  I am sure, knowing Judit, she will get those trophies to our players and those from other schools promptly. 

I will use the trophy awards as a lead in to my discussion as to the amazing success of the Weibel Teams in the lower sections of the tournament as well as the minor successes of our Teams in the Championship sections.  I can proudly say that there is a reason we are well known in California as the most successful school chess program.  Of course, I give that credit to our great instructors and also the numerous private coaches and programs we have in Fremont.  Weibel students helped NorCal House of Chess and Shoreview Chess win numerous first places in this year’s non-academic Club Team awards.  This year players could compete on both School and Club Teams.  A few of our students are also actively engaged in learning programs through Royal Chess and the Wei Liu Academy.  We may not have produced the top players this year, but we certainly had the most depth of solid chess students.    The vast majority of players at the State Championships are not in the Varsity Division.  Weibel Chess and its students were the talk of the tournament.  Numerous people came up to me to ask me how they could join our program.  I had to explain that Weibel Chess is open almost exclusively to students who attend Weibel.  While I do not allow students from other schools to participate in the Weibel Club classes on Tuesday’s, I do allow a few students, who can get to Weibel  by 3PM on Friday’s, to join us in our classes and tournament style play.  The present number of out of school players is seven with our Team having 102 members. 

            As I noted earlier, our weakest divisions were our Varsity/Championship Sections.  Mission San Jose Elementary School came in seeded first in the K-3, K-5 and K-6 sections with at least one player higher than our best in each group.   I had hoped our players would be able to take out one or two of their best to enable us to win in two if not all the Championship divisions, however we were not successful.  Mission San Jose proved superior in the K-3, K-5 and K-6 division. We could take some solace in taking a first in the Kindergarten division.  I am hoping this proves well for our future in this division.  We took second in the other three.  We placed behind MSJE by 1.5 points in both the K-3 and K-5 divisions and a ½ point in the K-6 divisions.  

    WEIBEL’S TROPHY WINNERS IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP SECTIONS:
Kindergarten—
Ekansh Samanta tied for 3rd

Edward Miu tied for 12th
Akarsh Khare tied for 12th  
Farhan Ali tied for 12th
Mai-Ha Nghiem tied for 33rd
Ethan Wu tied for 33rd
Krishank Sardesi tied for 33rd

K-3 Championship—
Aaron Hu tied for 8th
Dharshan Vetrivelan tied for 8th
Erin Law tied for 8th
Umesh Gopi tied for 19th
Weslie Chen tied for 19th
Prisha Jain tied for 26th

K-5 Championship—
Oliver Wu tied for 3rd
Aaron Lee tied for 5th
Zayaan Khan tied for 11th
Stanley Ko tied for 11th
Louis Law tied for 11th
Sidarth Raman tied for 11th
Sumukh Murthy tied for 21st

K-6 Championship—
Shivangi Gupta tied for 7th

Jeremey Chen tied for 7th
Enya Mistry tied for 7th
Atri Surapaneni tied for 7th
Anvi Surapaneni tied for 7th
Prithvi Nagamanivel tied for 14th
Rahul Ravishankar tied for 19th

    In the non-Championship sections Weibel won the K-3 Beginner, the K-3 Junior Varsity, the K-6 Beginner and the K-6 Junior Varsity.  We lost the K-3 Unrated and only had one player in the K-6 Unrated which does not count as a Team. 

K-3 Unrated—
Anika Jain tied for 26th

K-3 Beginner—
Kavya Shree Peela tied for 5th
Yesun Lee tied for 5th
Avyukt Bhardwaj tied for 16th
David Gao tied for 28th
Mihika Deshpande tied for 28th
Marcus Chan tied for 28th
Srijan Kakkera tied for 28th
Elena Xu tied for 28th

K-3 Junior Varsity—
Chau-Ha Nghiem tied for 2nd
Rutansh Pathak tied for 16th
Isha Varada tied for 16th
Vincent Yang tied for 16th

K-6 Unrated—
Ananya Kulshrestha tied for 5th


K-6 Beginner—
Irene Xu –FIRST PLACE TROPHY!
Chloe Chan tied for 3rd
Jieun Lim tied for 3rd
Navish Sinha tied for 9th
Prabhav Vishist tied for 18th

K-6 Junior Varsity—
Tanabh Mishra—tied for 3rd
Tanvi Deshpande—tied for 3rd
Jason Tse—tied for 3rd
Jongwon Lee—tied for 3rd
Mithil Srugarapu—tied for 16th
Arhan Chaudhary—tied for 19th
Surya Somasundaram—tied for 19th
Kripi Kini—tied for 19th

    As you can see Weibel players brought home a lot of hardware.

I hope I did not miss any Weibel students who won a trophy.  If I did miss your child please forgive me. I have not listed the Horner players or those from any other schools who come to Friday Chess.  Most of them won trophies as well.  You can view the complete results at: http://bayareachess.com/events/15/states-alpha/
You can go to http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/photographs.html to find links to the U.S.Chess Federation ratings and photos by Richard Shorman and myself.

FINAL NOTE:  Friday, May 29 is our Awards Ceremonies from 3 PM to 5:30 PM for both the Weibel Team and the Weibel Club.  That will end the formal chess program for the 2014-2015 school year.

Chess is Forever,
Alan

WEIBEL TEAMS SHINE AT THE ALL-GIRLS NATIONALS

WEIBEL TEAMS SHINE AT THE ALL-GIRLS NATIONALS
CHICAGO-April 17-19 2015

As most of you know already, the Weibel Teams that went to compete at the 12th Annual All-Girls Chess Nationals in Chicago the weekend of  April 17-19 2015 returned home with lots of hardware and another championship title.  This was the largest field of players in the history of the tournament. Three hundred and fifty eight players competed for individual and team titles. 

Weibel’s Under 12 Girls Team (Shivangi Gupta, Anvi Surapaneni, Enya Mistry and Amy Chan) followed in the footsteps of the teams of the last two years--they brought home the title defeating the New York chess powerhouse I.S. 318 by one point.  The top three players points are counted for the team score.  We had great depth.  If anyone of our second, third or fourth players fumbled we still would have brought home the title thanks to the strong play by Shivangi Gupta, the 2015 State Girls and Polgar Girls Champion.  Shivangi tied for fifth place in the individual competition along with Chenyi Zhao of Warm Springs Elementary.  Shivangi and Chenyi had tied for the Under 12 Polgar Championship.  Shivangi defeated Chenyi in the regular event but lost the chance to be the individual to receive Polgar Foundation funding for the World Youth Championship in the Fall.  Chenyi defeated Shivangi in the blitz play-offs.  Shivangi can still attend the World Youth Championships if she can find another source of funding.

Last year Weibel’s only girls team at the Championships was our U 12 Team.  This year, with a bit of arm twisting on my part, Weibel sent teams in the Under 8, Under 10 and indirectly in the Under 14 sections.  The four girls in the Under 14 section (Serafina Show, Raisah Khan, Sashrika Pandey and Sara Kaushik) were from Horner Junior High School.  They proudly wore their Weibel T-shirts and provided each of their opponents with Weibel patches.  I decided that I would have Weibel logo patches produced and the girls would give one to each person they played.  It is common in the World Youth Chess Championships to provide opponents with a symbol of one’s team or country.  When my boys played traveling soccer it was common to exchange patches or pins.  In fact, it was fun to watch them during half time, while eating their oranges, to be trading pins with players from other teams.   I also provided small California flags for our girls and a few other California girls to place by their chess boards so I could easily find them to take pictures.

The Horner Junior High School chess girls placed third in the team competition in the Under 14 division. I.S. 318 won this group as it has done for many years.  They placed two points ahead of us with a team from Memphis, Tennessee taking second with 11 to our 10.5 points. I thought we had a good chance to win the title from I.S. 318 this year until I saw the entries. I was very pleased we did as well as we did as the Under 14 section was the toughest field of the tournament.  We came in seeded fifth and so at third, we placed higher than our initial seeding.  Once again we had depth.  We would have placed in third even if one of our second, third or fourth girls had floundered.  It is always good to have a back-up player.  Serafina Show, our highest rated player, received 4.5 points out of six and tied for fourth.  I guess the best way I can explain how well she did is to mention that her U.S. Chess Federation rating jumped to 1874.  Raisah Khan also showed how well she played against the tough competition by going from a rating of 1331 to 1384.

I think I shocked everyone at this Friday’s team meeting when I said I was the proudest of our Under 10 Team

(Prisha Jain, Sophia Zhu and Kavya Peela).  After the first round the Weibel Team was in eleventh place. Slowly but surely the team kept moving up in the standings—eighth, sixth, fifth.  The organizers only provided four team trophies.  So I gave the three Under 10 players one of my long-winded talks to inspire them.  A number of girls laughed.  I asked why and they said it sounded like I copied my talk from Coach Demetrius Goins.  Demetrius, by the way, had flown to Chicago with his wife Kelly to help the Weibel girls as a number of them were presently his students. I had brought National Master and Women’s FIDE Master Uyanga Byambaa with us to inspire the girls and go over their games. 

Uyanga gave it her all.  Any time you walked into our team room you would see her analyzing some players game.  Ted Castro, of the NorCal House of Chess here in Fremont, stopped by our team room a number of times to cheer our girls on.  He had in the past coached a number of our girls while he taught at Weibel or as private students.  Back to my main thread—as the sixth and last round ended and two of our Under 10 girls won their games and the third took a draw, I was sure we had the fourth place trophy.  I was thrilled when we ended up in third place especially since we placed ahead of seven New York schools. Granted, two New York private schools, Dalton and Speyer Legacy place ahead of us.

Last, but far from least, was our dynamic, energetic and driven Under 8 Team (Erin Law, Yesun Lee and Chau-Ha Nghiem).   I had never expected that this team with two novices and only one experienced player, Erin Law, would ever be in first place.  Yet, through the first five rounds that is exactly where they were.  Yet, they reversed the direction of our Under 10 Team.  Each round the other teams pulled closer to us.  Before the sixth round started it still looked good for this dynamic trio.  All Weibel needed was two wins to take a clear first and one win from any of our three players to tie for first.  I guess their running around, hiding under the tables, and carrying each other around took its toll.  All three lost their games and we placed second to New York PS 139 the strongest of the New York public elementary schools.  Perhaps I should have ordered the parents to take their girls and make them nap after each round as one parent from another school in Fremont does with his daughter.  I guess that just isn’t in my nature.  As many of you know, I have only sons and grandsons so I guess I just couldn’t help myself enjoying these faux granddaughters of mine having fun.  Now all I am left with is the chess player’s lament, “I shoulda, I coulda, if I woulda.”

I would like to thank all the parents who took the weekend to join their daughters in Chicago.  Their support

was, as far as I am concerned, unmatched by any other group and accounted in a big way for the success of our girls.  I would like to thank NM Uyanga Byambaa for taking a weekend away from her studies to coach the girls in Chicago. While we were in Chicago she checked her e-mail and learned she had been accepted as a transfer student at U.C.L.A. I just read on Facebook that she also received acceptance to Berkeley.  As much as I think U.C.L.A. is a better school, I hope she selects Cal.  Perhaps she will then be able to continue teaching at Weibel. 

Another thank you goes to Rob Chan for his willingness to drive myself and Demetrius and Kelly Goins to the Baha’i Temple even though he had visited it once before.  I am sorry that on the way back from the Temple Demetrius did not get to taste a true Chicago deep dish pizza. The place we went to produced some thick crust thing they called deep dish.  As I told him, being from New York, deep dish isn’t really a pizza anyway because you can’t fold the slices in your hand, have the mozzarella cheese flow over the sides and get grease all over your clothes. 

Thanks to NM Uyanga Byambaa, WFM Alexandra Botez, IM Emory Tate, Lauren Goodkind and Elaine Veksler for giving up one of their Sundays to help train our girls.  Oh, and least I forget, many thanks to the parents who allowed us to use their homes for these training sessions. Kudos, once again, to the 14 Weibel girls who played so well in Chicago. 

That sounds like a good ending for my report, but I am never finished in boring you by writing too much.  I need to add a few personal experiences that warmed my soul.  The organizers of the championships gave me a bottle of wine because they were thrilled about the number of girls I brought from the far distant country of California.  I was thrilled, I told the organizers at a coaches meeting, to swipe an idea from their event to use at my own--a small box on each table for the players to place their turned off cellphones in during their games. 

As many of you know I love photography.  I consider myself a photojournalist – a street photographer.  In Chicago, in the past, I have taken many people shots and mixed them with photographs of the amazing architecture of the city.  This year I took a photo that is out of character for me, yet one I love--a night shot of part of the city and the waterfront from my 32nd floor window.  That alone could have topped off the success of the Weibel girls, but something even more moving occurred.  As I was sitting at the airport Monday morning, awaiting my flight and looking out at a dull raining day, I heard a voice say, “Aren’t you Professor Kirshner?”  I turned my head to see a young man.  He had just gotten off the plane we would be boarding.  He told me he got out of the line heading for the baggage area when he saw me as he wanted to tell me how much he had enjoyed my college class years back and how much I had inspired him to continue his education.  We talked for about five minutes.  As he left to catch his next flight the woman sitting next to me said, “That was a heart warming conversation.”  She continued, “I realize how thankless the teaching profession can be at times, but I am sure it is times like this that warm your soul.”  She was so right.
Chess is Forever,
Alan
MY PHOTOGRAPHS: http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/photographs.html

WEIBEL @ THE SUSAN POLGAR FOUNDATION NATIONAL OPEN FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

    This weekend, February 28 and March 1, 31 members of the Weibel Chess Team travelled to San Mateo to compete in the Susan Polgar Foundation’s National Open Championships for Boys and Girls.   This is the first time this event has been held on the West Coast.  We have Chris Torres of the Chess and Music Academy to thank for bringing the Championships to the Bay Area.  This was his first venture into running a large major tournament and he did a fine job.  Grand Master Susan Polgar and her husband Paul Truong brought their charismatic personalities and helped draw competitors from all over the United Sates and Canada to the event. 
  
 I admit I was amazed that so many of the Weibel Team players attended as this was not a required event.  Most of our top players were there and even without our full teams Weibel Chess proved that our program could compete with the best.  Our Teams finished first in the Under 12 Boy’s Division as well as the Under 8 and Under 12 Girl’s Divisions.  We lost to Mission San Jose Elementary School in the Under 10 Boy’s Division by a half a point. From my perspective as a coach I think our players in this section deserve loads of accolades as they accomplished this task without our second highest rated player being present and obtained their second place by finishing strong.  As many of you have heard me say for years, “our weakness is that our players cannot finish well.”  Our Under 10 Boy’s came from a fairly large deficit to almost winning the section.  I admit that I tried to bribe them by offering their team members an ice-cream party if they each could win their games in the last round.  They came close to succeeding with only one of the players losing his game.  The big question is, “Will they be able to do at the CalChess State Championship” against the very powerful Mission San Jose 4-5 Grade team.  All I can say is that I am looking forward to dishing out the ice-cream.
   
Our hero of the two day event was Shivangi Gupta.  She tied for first in the Under 12 Girl’s Division.  Since the winner of the section would obtain the right to compete in the World Youth Championships there had to be a blitz (fine minute chess) playoff between the top two contenders.  Chenyi Zhao, a Warm Springs Elementary School student who is one of the top girls in her age group in the United States with an 1861 rating was her opponent. Shivangi had defeated her in the fourth round. They both had five wins and one loss.  Shivangi’s rating is 1397.  I stood on a table to capture the blitz game on film.  As the time ticked away, Shivangi had a dominating lead and all felt she would get to go to the Youth World Championships.  However, in her aggressive speed play Shivangi overlooked a mating pattern Chenyi had created. Shivangi had to settle with a “wait until next year” and a memory that she had defeated Chenyi in their earlier game. 
   
As I have done in my recent articles I am only going to name the trophy winners in each section.  In the Under 8 Boy’s we had our poorest showing.  While I hate making excuses like I woulda, I coulda,
I shoulda, I am convinced we would have done a lot better if this were a required event for most of the players who had led us to our victories in the Age Level’s six and seven year old sections were not present.  This translates to “none of our players came home with trophies.”   The Under 8 Girl’s was a different story. Erin Law continuing her recent successes tied for second place, Chau-Ha Nghiem eighth place and Yesun Lee tied for ninth place.

Oliver Wu tied for third place in the Under 10 boys division winning five of his six games.  Louis Law and Dharshan Vetrivelan tied for 12th place winning four games each.   The Girl’s Under 10 was another Division in which we could have used a few of the Team players who selected not to attend.  Please do understand that when I write this I am not saying they should have been there.  Out main   goals this year are to win our State championship and the all-Girls Nationals.  Any victories at the Polgar were a bonus and preparation for those upcoming events. Isha Varada, who I noted in my article on the Age Level surprised me with her success, proved it was no fluke.  She took home a ninth place trophy.  Prisha Jain tied for 11th.

My special Kudos go to our Under 12 Boy players. After not finishing well at the Grade Level in December they looked a lot better here.  Granted they didn’t have to finish well as both the boys and     girls teams took insurmountable leads far before the last rounds.  Rahul Ravishankar, Sutryateja Mandadi and Aaron Lee tied for 10th place winning four out of their six games.  I already mentioned Shivangi Gupta’s, the 2015 CalChess State Girls Champion, success at this event.  She had strong back up with Amy Chan’s tie for ninth place and Enya Mistry and Amirah Mohamed Rafi’s tie for 12th place.  If they can keep up this level of play and with the addition of the strong play of Anvi Surapaneni, who was not at the Polgar, they will win the Under 12 National Girl’s title for the third year in a row. 

A few former Weibel students, now at Horner won trophies in the Under 14 Boys and Girls Division’s.  Kia Sadegi tied for 11th and Avi Khanna tied for 18th in the Boy’s.  Sara Kaushik tied for fourth and Raisah Khan for seventh.  Former Weibel student Aria Lakhmani, now at Basis, took second.  I would like to thank her father, Sonny, for making sure I was fed on both Saturday and Sunday.
   
In closing, let me provide a million thanks to those parents who gave up their weekend to spend both days in San Mateo when it was not required. In some ways this was a first for Weibel parents.  Over my 25 years with the Weibel Chess Team I have had a hard time to get parents to travel to tournaments outside the Tri-City Area.  I am aware that they have done so reluctantly when the tournament was required as was the CalChess Grade Level in Stockton or the CalChess Girls Championships in San Rafael.  Somehow, over the years most parents, not all, candidly seemed to think that taking their children to a remote place like San Mateo was like a trip to Timbuktu.  Parents of the 31 players who attended the Polgar did not mutter a word or look as if they put themselves out.  They were there to support their children and the Weibel Team.  You cannot imagine how good that felt.  It may have taken me 25 years, but I think I finally have a large number of Team parents who understand what a commitment to an elite competitive team means.  So once again—THANK YOU!

Chess is Forever,
Alan
PS:  You can find complete results at http://chessandmusic.com/susanpolgarfoundation/
I will shortly process my photographs and post them at my usual site: http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/photographs.html